What WERE these people thinking...

Mark Eatherton

I went to a job Monday, that had a smallish CFT boiler. The customer said it had a tendency to light off with a BANG.



I had the customer raise the stat to get it to fire, and it immediately went for trial for ignition. Just as I was leaning down to look into the fire box to see if the pilot was going to light, KABOOM, flame shot out of the hole, right past my head. Shortly thereafter, a secondary BOOM as the main burner ignited. Same thing, flames and carbon belching form the eye hole and burner assembly.



A quick test with the combustion analyzer told me there were some serious problems (like I needed the analyzer to tell me that...) because the CO was off the charts (over 5,000 PPM). I shut it down and showed the HO what I found and told him that I was going to have to tear it down and fix it right then and there. Too dangerous to leave on line. He then started to tell me of the NUMEROUS service calls to a local service company, and that after NUMEROUS trips and tweakings, that they finally quit responding to his calls for help... Nice way to do business.



At first, I thought possibly someone had crossed the wires between the ignition module and the gas valve (PV, MV and PV/MV), but a quick tug trace proved them to be correct.



So I shut down the gas, and power and pulled the burner to get started. I cleaned the burners. THe heat exchanger was LOADED with carbon and corrosion. (high mass distribution and impropelry piped/installed near boler piping) This same service company had taken the top of the boiler off less than a year ago and cleaned up the fire side green condensate corrosion. They evidently didn't do anything on the bottom (fire) side of the exchanger, because it was loaded with crap. After about 1/2 hour of brushing, banging and vacuuming, I finally got it clean. I then turned back to the pilot assembly , and found that the previous service company had taken the pilot orifice OUT.



Did I mention that the original reason for service was that the pilot wasn't lighting correctly? They RIPPED the orifice out of the pilot, and upon a call for ignition, the 1/4" tube was dumping gas into the combustion chamber unrestricted, and once the gas worked its way back down to the pilot, KABOOM, it lit with a firery fury. Then, when the main burner lit, KABOOM, it too lit with a bang. Come to find out, the main burner orifices were set for sea level operation...



A minor pressure adjustment cleaned that issue right up, and fortunately, the HO still had the old pilot assembly, which still had the restrictive pilot orifice, and I put that back in.



After all is said and done, the appliance was at 25 PPM A/F CO, and lit off exactly as it was designed, smoothly and without an explosion.



Now, I know we've all had head shakers that cause us to doubt our selves, but ripping the orifice out of the pilot, and obviously not bothering to do an combustion analysis?



If someone had died, or worse, the owner of the service company has EVERYTHING to lose...



At least I can sleep well at night knowing that the consumer will wake up in the morning... I made certain that he has CO detectors through out the home.



What were they thinking....



ME

Steamhead

The answer is

they weren't thinking at all. You can't fix stupid. 

Tim McElwain

This is why

I am so frustrated with the way so called trained, licensed service techs are conducting them selves and the local gas utilities have a beer and pretzel training session and make them certified installers. They have an instructor running around who used to drive the road patch truck for a utility and he is doing appliance service training.



I recently asked 10 installers of high end equipment if they did a combustion test upon completion of the installation of Mod/Con boilers, answer no because they are factory adjusted.



Somebody is going to die and then we will see if they wake up.



Answers I get as to why folks do not want to come for training "you are too expensive" I am too busy" "It is too far away" "I already know all that stuff".



Combustion testing of design gas equipment 3 day seminar starting Monday running through Wednesday next week with hands on in the field on Wednesday ONE TECH SIGNED UP JUST AN HOUR AGO. I will do the one man class because this tech genuinely wants to be trained.

Jean-David Beyer

Wow! I am really impressed you would do this.

"ONE TECH SIGNED UP JUST AN HOUR AGO. I will do the one man class because this tech genuinely wants to be trained."



What a deal for that one tech! A private tutorial for the price of a class.